Identity is one of the fundamental questions of life:
- Where did I come from?
- Where am I going?
- What is my purpose?
- How should I live?
- What is truth?
People without answers to these questions head through life aimless, bound to be dissatisfied as one who doesn’t recognize their purpose is unable to find fulfillment.
Discovering my Purpose
My English teacher lead an entire unit on “Man’s Search for Meaning” when I was in high school. At that point, the content was over my head. I was just frustrated by the whole question. Baptized in the summer following 8th grade, I already knew all the answers to these questions: God created me. I’m going to heaven. My purpose is to follow him. I should live according to His Will. The truth is what really happened and what God says is true. Why bother ruminating on it beyond that!?
You can tell what a person really believes based on what they DO–not what they claim. I could make all those claims & fervently stand by them, but fail to live them. I still needed to discover the latter.
In college, I was very impressed by the initiative young students could take in campus life. They could start up an organization and run it as long as they had the will and perseverance to manage it.
In adult Bible class, I started to realize that the moment I’d been seeking since childhood–the time when I graduate from learning to doing the disciple life–wasn’t achieved through age or degree. I could sit around in Bible class every week and study hard and answer questions, but it’s all for nothing if I do nothing with it except improve my own private life.
So now I truly understand my purpose: to prove my faith by my life and to show God I truly believe in Him by living like I do, not just for myself but as a light for the world.
John 5:39-40
39 You study[a] the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
2 Corinthians 6:2
He says, “In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.” I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.
Matthew 9:37-38
37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. 38 Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
John 4:35
35Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.
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